ABOUT ME

Get to know Andy H. Tu

RESILIENCE

“You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.”

ABOUT

About Resilience

Resilience Pictures was created to depict human resiliency.

Resilience is all about being able to overcome the unexpected. Sustainability is about survival. The goal of resilience is to thrive even through our darkest fears.

As a photographer I am here to document the memories of the athlete's blood, sweat and tears through artistic photos.

When faced with adversity in life, how does a person cope or adapt? Why do some people seem to bounce back from tragic events or loss much more quickly than others? Why do some people seem to get "stuck" in a point in their life, without the ability to move forward?" Everybody has resilience. It's just a question of how much and how well you put it to good use in your life.

Hara Estroff Marano, Editor-at-Large for Psychology Today, wrote in her article,The Art of Resilience,"At the heart of resilience is a belief in oneself— yet also a belief in something larger than oneself."

Resilient people do not let adversity define them.

"They find resilience by moving towards a goal beyond themselves, transcending pain and grief by perceiving bad times as temporary state of affairs. It's possible to strengthen your inner self to define yourself as capable and competent. It is possible to fortify your psyche and develop a sense of mastery."

Perfect Imperfections

One of the greatest lessons I learned about art was during my freshman year at the Academy of Art as a young artist.

I was not confident in my abilities and had a tendency to overwork my art, furthermore never knowing when I was done.

Develop Enough Self-Knowledge

One of my professors Henry Chan pulled me aside one day and told me how to stop. He explained that in time, I would develop enough self-knowledge to know when I was done with the art, rather than when the art was done.

He instructed, I should churn out as much work as I could, instead of trying to perfect the piece I'm working on now in addition I should move on and put that energy into starting a new project (practice makes perfect, after all). I think his view was that unfinished art was preferable to art that was taken too far and that interesting things were hidden in the imperfections.

Perfect & Destroy

It was wise advice and as 18 year old do, I ignored it. As a result, I spent many more years perfecting and thus destroying my own work before coming around to his point of view. I will still have not fully learned this lesson, as some of you may have noticed. I have been messing around with the look of my website as well as revising and rewriting posts days after I've published them.

Andy H. Tu | Photographer

Fitness and art have always been my passion growing up.I was inspired by Ninja Turtles, Bruce Lee, Jim Lee and Joe Madureira. Throughout my life I've been attached to art and have been working in the visual effects and animation field since 2008. The volatile nature of the film and game industry caused me to fall out of love because getting work became too stressful and the lack of freedom restricted creativity, so I created Resilience with my partner Sinde, owner of Resilience by Sinde.

They know their boundaries.

Resilient people understand that there is a separation between who they are at their core and the cause of their temporary suffering. The stress/trauma might play a part in their story but it does not overtake their permanent identity.

They practice acceptance.

Pain is painful, stress is stressful, and healing takes time. When we're in it, we want the pain to go away. When we're outside it, we want to take away the pain of those who we see suffering. Yet resilient people understand that stress/pain is a part of living that ebbs and flows.

They’re willing to sit in silence.

We are masters of distraction: T.V., overeating, abusing drugs, risky behavior, gossip, etc. We all react differently to stress and trauma. Some of us shut down and some of us ramp up. Somewhere in the middle there is mindfulness-- being in the presence of the moment without judgment or avoidance.